We found we could use our creativity more making this type of websites for fitness competitors, whereas most business websites can be rather dull and plain - which is what they usually ask for. Working in Fireworks and making the graphics ready for export into slices is what we absoloutly love to do, maybe we should push this side of our work more.

We have had so many people ask "how did you make the graphics" yet, the technical side never seems to draw in this attention - obviously there would be no website without it, but it seems our graphics always get comments, lol.

This whole thread certainly struck a chord with me. I can empathise fully with the trials of trying to build the business up. We originally set ours up with the purpose of eventually having financial and administrative freedom and not having to work for anyone else. The interesting thing is that a couple of months ago the company I was working for suddenly "downsized" and I was one of the unlucky ones- on the face of it.

Although my partner continues to work full time, we're now aiming at her going part time and doing more of the business work- and of course I'm now doing that full-time. The thing is, I would probably never have had the courage to go down the road of jacking in my job with the aim of concentrating on building up the business- but because the decision was taken out of my hands, I decided it was an opportunity and for the last few months I've been aiming 100% at building it up. Hopefully we can reach the stage where my partner can at least go part time and I can top up as necessary with contract work.

My point is- have you considered giving up the day job to concentrate on the business development? I know a lot of people may react with horror to what appears to be a reckless idea- but if you can afford to get by with some savings for several months, it's worth considering:

- you can get much more work done
- you can also concentrate on the development of the business
- if prospects or clients ring at home you can be there to answer and help- it looks a lot more professional when the phone gets answered during business hours!

As I say that's what we decide to do, and it's just reached the point where we're breaking even, which means we can continue in this vein for at least several more months and see where we get to.

I've always hated the idea of being a Mr Nobody working for Company X and getting nowhere- and I guess the events earlier this year were the final straw.

Have a think about it (if you can afford to give it a go for a few months or so). You can use the time to put effort into such things as networking, maybe entering into partnerships with companies, going to meetings and chatting to people and just generally getting the word out. We've found that networking and developing relationships and just even chance conversations with people have proved to be far more lucrative than plain advertising- especially now when we *need* to get out there and spread the word.

Also it may sound obvious (apologies if it does) but it's about being utterly focussed and determined above all else- complete and utter pigheaded willpower and determination and hard work do the trick more often than not (and yes, luck too). And trying to stay healthy and able to work effectively!

As many have said in this thread there are is so much competition from freelancers it can be seriously overhelming. If you take a look at the Digital Point forums there is a constant battle of people offering less and less for projects, places such as freelancer.net are no exception. What you obviously do need to remember is just because your the cheapest doesn't mean you'll get the clients - so stick to your plan and your choosen pricing structure.

Firstly from my point of view i'd (as mentioned by a couple of others) look at removing or reducing the animation via the flash... ask yourself 'is this animation really necessary' - perhaps just reduce it down to one fade in and 2 lines of text flying onto the screen. At the end of the day flash isn't good for your SEO and its ultimately just causing a distraction. If you want to go beyond this and improve the site i'd suggest making the site html compliant and possibly redesigning slightly to make it a bit more 'sharp' and 'clean'. Go and take a look at your competitors, what are their websites like? what have they got that yours hasn't? Getting rid of all the tables and going pure css would be ideal but i appreciate that isn't aways possible.

Secondly i think in order to succeed you really need to work on getting found... 'web design manchester' is what i'd search for and i couldn't find you on google, i gave up looking after page 4! Its often been the case in the past with companies that have dropped significantly out of google due to an algorithm change has caused their company to fail. In the same way getting into the top of the search engines would do wonders! To do this you need to decide what keyword/phrase you want to target your service(s) towards and then you need to build backlinks like crazy - this will provide the stepping stop for getting your site properly into the SERPs. Lets just say that getting into the top 10 for 'web design manchester' is quite achievable...

I personally think that if you address the important SEO issues and target your services and promo specifically towards the Manchester market (and/or surrounding area) you could make something of your business. This would be a good first step at least...

I think there's a problem with the understanding of web developer & web designer. I'm a web developer, but people often call me a web designer. When I've worked in a large company, then there are web designers who give web developers a visual brief (Photoshop), but when working with smaller organisations people don't seem to understand the need for a designer, though they often seem to want that creative designed look, which I tell them I'm not so good at & that they really could do with a designer. I can make things look nice, but the input of a graphic designer would so often make a site so much better.